Editor's Note

The Charge

First date, second chance.

Opening Statement

"Everything will be alright."

Facts of the Case

Don (Stanley Tucci, Julie & Julia) and Janna (Patricia Clarkson,
Six Feet Under) have been married for a long time. However, their
marriage has grown somewhat stale. They no longer feel they have much in common;
they can't "do anything together." So, in an attempt to keep things
fresh and alive, the couple meets each other on a series of blind dates. On each
date, Don and Janna play different characters. Is it just something to do, or is
the couple subtly working through some complicated issues via these
characters?

The Evidence

Based on a film by the late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh, Stanley Tucci's
remake of Blind Date is a film in which character development serves as a
substitute for a plot. The basic set-up of this little 80-minute film is very
simple: a married couple goes out on blind dates and pretends they are people
who have never met each other before. For the most part, all the film has to
offer is a series of these dates, which proceed with varying levels of success.
Likewise, the scenes themselves reach varying levels of success.

The film may sound like a somewhat dull talking heads piece, but it will
only play that way if you aren't paying close attention as you watch. By no
means should you simply accept the idea that everything the film has to offer
can be found on the surface. If that were the case, the movie would be an
immensely frustrating and irrelevant experience. You have to look a little
deeper…a lot deeper actually, considering that the opening narration (by
the couple's daughter, who remains unseen throughout the entire film) only sets
up a few basic facts (and not necessarily the ones we particularly want to know
right off the bat). You'll need to look between the lines for almost everything
else, which makes the film both a pleasure and a slightly exasperating
experience.

The most challenging thing about watching Blind Date for the first
time is attempting to figure out just how subtle the film's playing field is.
You may hear a line and wonder whether you should simply let it slide or attempt
to glean meaning from it. You see a gesture and wonder whether there was some
significance to it. You suspect that some of the recurring themes in the stories
Don and Janna tell each other may be variations on things that happened in real
life. Will all of your mental work and anguish be rewarded with some sort of
revelation at the film's conclusion? I'll never tell, though I can certainly see
plenty of positive and negatives to either option.

All of the encounters between the couple occur in the small club where Don
works full-time as a magician. As such, the material has a very stage-bound feel
to it, but Tucci and Clarkson do not treat this material as a play. Their
performances are too improvisational, too willing to wander in long silences
free of movement or language. This probably wouldn't work on the stage, but on
film we are permitted to examine the participants from a more intimate angle.
Tucci also attempts to make the material a bit more cinematic with airy,
atmospheric shots of the club that serve as punctuation marks between the
encounters. Tucci is a good filmmaker who generally makes small,
character-driven movies, and this one is perhaps his smallest and most
character-driven.

Fortunately, he's also a nuanced actor who is capable of playing a
challenging part like this with ease. Tucci and Clarkson make superb sparring
partners, sliding through their variety of characters and finding lovely little
consistencies to help us understand just a little bit about who they are as
people. Some of the characters they play are particularly broad, while others
are rather elusive. They tend to take turns acting and reacting. In one
instance, Clarkson plays an aggressive woman who enters the room, grins at
Tucci, punches him in the stomach and throws alcohol in his face. In another
scene, Tucci comes wobbling into the room while pretending to be a blind man,
which cracks Clarkson up (one of a handful of charming moments of levity in what
is largely an intensely dramatic film).

The transfer is somewhat underwhelming, as there is a bit of color bleeding
at times and detail is severely lacking. Black crush is a problem, too. Still,
this isn't a film that really needs a spectacular transfer, so I'm less
concerned about it than I would be in many instances. The sound is just fine,
with the dialogue coming through with clarity. Oddly enough, the soundtrack is
an odd batch of numbers that sound like they could be taken from European
soundtracks of the '30s and '40s. That's appropriate enough, given that the
movie feels vaguely European in construction anyway. The only supplement is a
very engaging commentary with Tucci and Clarkson, who provide some nice insights
into the characters they play.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

The film's great big moment of drama towards the end somehow has less power
than it ought to, perhaps because the film never quite escapes the vibe of
feeling slightly more like an experiment than an honest story of humanity. In
addition, there are elements of the film that veer into pretense, particularly
something we learn about the narration (you'll know what I mean when you find
out).

Closing Statement

I liked Blind Date slightly less than some of Tucci's other films
(particularly Big Night and Joe Gould's Secret), but it's a
thoughtful little movie that deserves a look.